Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Drzewiecki vs. Carroll

The college football season kicked off last night and continues through Monday night, but for Executive Sports Editor Brad Carroll and myself it had already begun.
Carroll and I sat down for the first time in awhile to play a few games of EA Sports’ Madden and a game of NCAA Football.
I’m just going to get to the interesting stuff and not bore you about how I destroyed him in Madden as I believe the score of our final game was 53-13.
Clearly Mr. Carroll can’t beat me in Madden, so I was confident going up against him in college. And I jumped out of the gate extremely quick. In no time, I, playing as Southern Cal, led 28-7 over his Florida Gators.

Of course, with what I’ll call a decided computer-cheat advantage, Brad and the Gators started their comeback and never looked back.

My demise started once my players decided that they were going to forget to hold onto to the football, as Carroll obviously found the button that allowed him to cause fumbles and intercept passes. I would be fine if it only happened a couple of times, but no, the turnovers kept coming and it allowed Carroll to take the improbable, come from behind victory by the final, 49-42.
I have to admit I was shocked because I talked a big game going in and after a big victory in Madden I was feeling untouchable.
Yet, his huge comeback during the game leads me to believe that he might have planned on the comeback and everything before that was for show. I think he’s a hustler.
Carroll and I will be sitting down again to have a rematch in college football and I’m pretty sure I can walk away with a victory this time ... or not. I don’t want to be that confident because it didn’t work out the last time.
Now if you are one of those people who still haven’t gotten into the wonderful world of sports gaming, I think it’s about time you try.
This year’s college game has several new features and tweaks that make it worth picking up for the $60 price tag.
The assignment AI gives you new running lanes to double-team blocking. This makes the offensive performance feel more in-depth and that can only be a good thing. The next feature is the locomotion system. This system has an all-new authentic running mechanics. You will be able to stop your momentum when you want to and also rebalance yourself after an over-pursuit.
That feature made me remember something and that’s the speed of college players in the game. Why are they so fast? They’re not that fast in real life and when Carroll and I were playing one of my guys moved so fast he was almost a blur, it was like watching the Flash (yeah I just made a comic book reference, don’t judge me).
In other news, EA Sports will be releasing its new NHL game titled simply NHL 11 this upcoming Tuesday. These games in the past have really raised the bar for hockey games and this year they have a whole new real-time physics engine that promises to bring even more realism.
EA is making some huge promises with this game, the biggest being this will be the most complete hockey game that has ever been created.
Let’s hope they can live up to that or there is going to be a lot of dissapointed hockey fans out there ... like Paul Angilly. Although I don’t think Angilly plays hockey games.

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